u will not be saved in your
sleep. You will not waken up at the last day and find yourself saved by
the grace of God and you not know it. You will know it to your bitter
cost before your soul is saved from sin and death. You and your minister
too. And therefore it is that He Who is to judge your soul at last says
to you, as much as He says it to any of His ministers, Watch! What I say
unto one I say unto all, Watch. Watch and pray, lest you enter into
temptation. Look to yourself, then, sinner. In Christ's name, look to
yourself and watch yourself. You have no enemy to fear but yourself. No
one can hurt a hair of your head but yourself. Have you found that out?
Have you found yourself out? Do you ever look in the direction of your
own heart? Have you begun to watch what goes on in your own heart? What
is it to you what goes on in the world around you compared with what goes
on in the world within you? Look, then, to yourself. Watch, above all
watching, yourself. Watch what it is that moves you to do this or that.
Stop sometimes and ask yourself why you do such and such a thing. Did
you ever hear of such a thing as a motive in a human heart? And did your
minister, watching for your soul, ever tell you that your soul will be
lost or saved, condemned or justified at the last day according to your
motives? You never knew that! You were never told that by your
minister! Miserable pair! What does he take up his Sabbaths with? And
what leads you to waste your Sabbaths and your soul on such a stupid
minister? But, shepherd or no shepherd, minister or no minister, look to
yourself. Look to yourself when you lie down and when you rise up; when
you go out and when you come in; when you are in the society of men and
when you are alone with your own heart. Look to yourself when men praise
you, and look to yourself when men blame you. Look to yourself when you
sit down to eat and drink, and still more when you sit and speak about
your absent brother. Look to yourself when you meet your enemy or your
rival in the street, when you pass his house, or hear or read his name.
Yes, you may well say so. At that rate a man's life would be all
watching. So it would. And so it must. And more than that, so it is
with some men not far from you who never told you how much you have made
them watch. Did you never know all that till now? Were you never told
that every Christian man, I do not mean every communicant, but